Wednesday, May 3, 2017

world...meet Flower325b - and some other stuff!

what a gorgeous day and we got a ton of stuff done even though jambaloney has been working on his contract ALL.DAY.LONG.AGAIN. and he is back in to work - AGAIN - tomorrow. arghghghgh!

here is one of our 2 famous ravens.

they jump on the roof of our house every morning in order to alert us to the fact that they need to be fed. they seem to have a thing for eating old cat food. who knew?

kids - do any of you like kombucha? it is a fermented, fizzy tea drink. we have been enjoying it for years - it's very healthy and if you would like more info go here. people say it is an acquired taste but we loved it the first time we drank some - soooo deelish!

anyway - we have bought organic kombucha over the past several years. and benefited from it. but it is expensive. and as you all know - we DO NOT accept any kind of advertising on our blog so if we recommend something - we mean it. this is our very favourite "bought" kombucha and we can't recommend it enough!

finally, i decided that if i could make several different kinds of kimchi, sauerkraut, sauerruben, etc. - then there was no way that i couldn't make our own kombucha! a few weeks ago, i ordered a kombucha scoby from Karma Cultures and could not be happier with the product we received! again, we receive nothing for our reviews and we accept no ads...but if a product exceeds all of our expectations - then we share it with you all. especially if it promotes good health.

about 10 days ago i received my scoby and additional implements and instructions. MY Scoby is named Flower325b which means she comes from a long line of scobies. i followed the instructions to a tee and check out my results:

i am not just proud - i am super proud! in the big jar you can see the Mother Scoby (Flower325b) and a secondary Mother beginning at the side of the jar. you can see 2 mason jars filled with kombucha - and the third was filled but then we had to test-taste it. OMG! OMG! OMG! soooo super delicious! a one-time investment and we will be drinking kombucha for the rest of our lives!

if anyone would like me to send a scoby once i have a secondary Mother going - i will send it. the only problem is shipping costs. i will have to vaccuum seal the mother in a bag with at least 2 cups of kombucha, include directions, etc.....but it will have to be expressed ship as the Mother scoby can only survive so long in a bag. but if any of you are serious and are willing to work out shipping details - let me know. i don't want to sound cheap but shipping anything from this remote island costs nothing short of a fortune!

again - it has been a majestic day! in the middle of the pic below is a ....."craven". we have crows and ravens here all day long and when we can't tell whether it is a raven or a crow - we call it a "craven" - bahahahahah!

kids - when your day is going to filled with scobies and cravens and transplanting a bunch of tomatoes - you need a good breakfast! we are still up to our eyeballs in our own potatoes from last year - woohoo! so we had our own fried potatoes, poached eggs, from-scratch hollandaise sauce poured over the eggs, potatoes and steamed broccoli, some tomatoe slices and a fresh sprig of our own parsley.

yummeh.

dinner (lunch to some) was a very basic salad with a kick.

lettuce, tomatoe, cucumber, our own green onions and our own parsley. the kick? a salad dressing of cold-pressed hemp oil, a ton of apple cider vinegar with the Mother (think scoby), a ton of fresh pressed garlic, fresh pressed ginger, a good squeeze of lemon and the usual suspects: turmeric, cumin and cayenne. you can't go wrong with that dressing as it goes with everything.

here's supper after a long day.

a salad of lettuce, chicken, mango, seedless grapes and the same dressing as i mentioned above. and a lobster roll...made proper with the bun toasted lightly with butter and a bucket load of fresh-caught lobster (jambaloney gets it cooked right before he leaves at end of day...and the lobster is caught that day!), mayo, lettuce and salt and pepper.

we transplanted 22 tomatoes into their forever-home pots in the greenhouse - buried them right up to their little heads in order to encourage lots of root growth.

comfrey tea was poured into each pot of dirt before the tomatoes were added. here's a ton of garlic coming up - woohoo!

and the most beautiful vision of all - potatoe tires!

jambaloney topped these tires up in the fall with all kinds of good stuff, raked it all in, they get more comfrey tea tomorrow and we'll be planting potatoes in the next few days. and this is the first year that we are still EATING our potatoes from last year. 40 tires stacked 3 high (as we hill them) produced 200lbs of potatoes last year plus all of our seed potatoes for this year.

kids - we looooooove potatoes!

i know i have only hit up a few of your blogs in the past day...but i had correspondence that needed attending to, bills and crap - plus all of the great fun in the garden and greenhouse. as you know, i like to keep this blog as a journal for what we are doing when...it makes it easy to look back over the years and see when we planted this or moved that to the greenhouse. which is why making this post is important to me. your blogs are important to me too. just give me a breath or two and i'll hit you all up and catch up to you all.

TB - go buy a bottle of organic kombucha, try it, i think you'll like it! and with your cheese-making knowledge - making your own kombucha will be a breeze. look up the health benefits of kombucha - it's really good for you!and yes - welcome spring!!!

Hi Kymer--yes, it's a busy time of year and it's hard to find the time to add in a blog or two.I've been out of potatoes for a month and store-bought just doesn't taste as good.I can't tell the difference between crows or ravens---but I do have a pair that raids my compost pile.

Sue - i hear you about store-bought versus your own potatoes...i can't stand store bought anymore. and we finally figured out how much we need to grow in order to still be eating our own potatoes in may. mind you, it only took about 6 or 7 years to figure it out - duh!

strangely enough, even though we have a giant compost pile, our ravens, crows and cravens never go there. we scrape all of the leftover catfood onto one plate and that's where they go every day. strange birds those ravens, crows and cravens. but we love them!

You land is so peaceful-looking! Can't wait to get some of my own. We have cravens too, I think they must be crows but they are so big that we have no idea! I've never had kombucha, but I know people rave about it. Congrats on making your own and having a forever supply of it! That's what it's all about isn't it? Self-sufficiency!!

Look at all those tires!!! :) I have 4 lol...one day I'll have a big collection like you do :) And all those tomatoes, beautiful!

Rain - land here in cape breton is CHEAP! i have found that the prices for mainland NS, NB and PEI to be incredibly expensive. the only other cheap place in the maritimes is NFLD.

as i told TB above, buy a bottle of kombucha and try it. see if you like it. it has many health benefits. and if you like it - you can make your own! forever! and you don't need land to make kombucha!

i can't wait until you guys get your own land - you are well on your way to getting there!

i started with 4 tires too! then found out that you can walk into any garage and they will give you all the tires you want - FOR FREE! garages save tires and when they get enough they have to pay to have the tires hauled out. trust me. if you want more tires - go to your nearest garage. soon they will be calling you in the middle of the night asking if you can come and pick up 20 more tires. and they'll pay for your gas - bahahahahahah!

jam is building us a second greenhouse and the tomatoes will live there. i'll keep you updated! xox

I'm looking forward to seeing your second greenhouse! I did ask my mechanic btw, and they said take what you need. My issue is that they store them in a shed and it reeks of cigarettes...I know I could wash them, but it's a mental block I have, I can't get that ash tray ick out of my mind! When we're more settled, I'll find some more tires because I'd like to outdo your potato farm hee hee! ;)

I love kombucha! I have a friend who gifted me a scoby but it is dried and I have to rehydrate it. If I totally fail, and if you still have a second fat momma scoby available, let's talk shipping costs! Your dressing sounds wonderful - I may try to whip up a jar, sans the cold-pressed hemp oil, which I most likely can't find here.

ok - kombucha first. try boiling 4 cups of water and then add 4 tea bags - or 6tspns of loose tea if you have it, green tea or true black tea (lipton's or red rose). let the teabag steep for about 15 mins. remove the tea bag and add 1 cup of non-refined sugar. stir until dissolved. then add 8 cups of water. stir all of that together and let it cool to room temperature. add your scoby, cover with cheesecloth and elastic band. put the jar in a dark, but warm, well-ventilated place. cover with a towel. check your scoby every day - just a peak. it should rehydrate itself in about 10 days.

if not - we'll talk about shipping. but try to rehydrate the one you have.

avocado oil, grape seed oil, EEVOO - all of those oils will work as a substitute. xoxo

About Framboise Manor

Framboise Manor is our Bug-Out Location (BOL) that we have been living in since December 2010. As can be seen by the above picture - calling it simply a "Manor" doesn't do it justice - we bet you think it is more like an "Estate", eh?

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Who Are We?

we are jambaloney and kymber. here's a pic of us below...we look very happy and content. it's because we really are!

About jambaloney

(he's only 23 in this pic...he has 20+years of additional muscle now...if you can believe it!)

kymber here and talking about jambaloney.

i've always called him my angel. my rock. my best half. the best part of what i have always wanted to become.

he has a soul as big as the biggest mountain, he is strong, he is in incredible physical condition, he is 51 and yet most people think he is under 40. he is humble and modest, charming, gorgeous and will help anyone with anything at anytime. he never grumbles and only every now and again complains or is a tiny bit cranky (nothing that a hug can't fix!). he can cut both sides out of 70 tires in minutes, build raised beds from scrap wood that he drags out of the forest, weedwhack 800ft of our road down to the river, and haul more wheelbarrows of dirt, mulch, rocks and seaweed than is probably medically-advised. he's learned how to braid, make bread and no one makes better rice - not even the chinese. he supports my every, crazy endevour. he went 44 years without a driver's license and got his license after being trained by my crazily-wonderful french canadian friend in 2 weeks. she never stopped talking the whole time. in french.

he has biked everywhere his entire life, at one job he biked 24km EACH WAY. that's to and from! 24km to work AND 24km from work! oh and just accidentally has an honours degree in philosophy.

i believe that he is Our Lord's most beautiful and perfect creation. but i might be biased. he can very accurately shoot a ben pearson cougar re-curve from both the left and right. and his aim is dead on.

he is bow-legged and only 5'7", but has the most incredible eyes. and a tiny mole on his upper lip. he writes the most romantic "insta-poems". he tells me he loves me several times a day. he calls me "babe" and "honey". and he means it.he loves hot sauce and spicey things like cayenne and banana peppers, he buys (or now picks) me flowers, he left a lucrative, high-paying IT job and his family to follow me here to this remote little island. he builds me shelves and washes all of our laundry with me by hand.

oh and he was baptized Anglican. and was an alter boy. sheesh. somehow, through my intervention, i am turning him into a pagan-christian-fundamentalist-confuscian. look, even i can't figure that out!

the name jambaloney is a nickname that i gave him over 10 years ago. he still uses it. he can be reached at "jambaloney@gmail.com". he loves comments or emails. and he loves me.

if i were given the opportunity to wish one thing for the world - i would wish that every woman on the planet had a jambaloney. i know that i could save the world this way. i have friends who have asked me to clone him. i am trying. believe me, i am trying. one day i will perfect the science involved, and when that happens, i promise all of you a jambaloney.

i love him more than...breathing, lobster, boiled dinner, fresh bread out of the oven, bugging out, singing back up for Madonna (ok...i made that one up!), fresh sheets on the bed, a glass of red wine after a long day, sunflower seeds, lavender, growing my own potatoes, T.S. Eliot, dancing, my babies (who are really just cranky old cats!) and the Bible.

i love him more than i love Framboise Manor. and i really love Framboise Manor.

About kymber

(this pic might seem odd. trust me, it's not. 20 yrs ago kymber went shopping with a girlfriend from the military and bought this dress. then she hooked up with that girlfriend recently. they caught up through email and one day kymberz friend mentioned that specific dress. kymber said she still had it (kymber still has her prom gown for crying out loud!). the friend did not believe it. so we had to take a pic of kymber wearing the 20yr old dress for her friend. kymber always likes to add accessories...and well, we had the bunny ears laying around. ya know, cuz everyone always has pink bunny ears laying around. ok, that's it...i am out of here! jambaloney)

what can i say about kymber?? A LOT!!most of it will have to wait for blog entries ‘cuz i just don’t have enough space here to do her justice…

so i’ll have to do my best… first and foremost, kymber is my partner and i will love her forever. she is the best partner anyone could ever have, i am one lucky guy!! she is 46, she is sweet as can be, smart as a whip, super cute, exceptionally feminine, strong as an ox, honest, kind, empathetic, wise, an amazing dancer, a master wit in speaking and writing….i could go on..i will!

at 5’ 1’’ she packs a wallop – a true force of nature -she is a master gardener and chef and spent 10 years in the Canadian Military – she has done 2 tours of Alert (the north bloody-cold pole). she is a UN-certified Korean linguist and spoils our 2 cats rotten. she also spent 12yrs working in the federal government, as a communications analyst at SolGen (now PSEPC) and Fintrac. she loves nature in the true sense of the phrase..the wildflowers, insects and birds here at framboise manor keep her entranced and captivated for hours.

anyone who is her friend knows that she will stop at nothing to help and heal, dedication and loyalty are an integral part of who she is and she is dead serious about anything she puts her mind to. yet she maintains the most delicate touch and a smile on her face always, never afraid to live and love no matter where and when.

she is the most genuine human being i have ever met! and she has encouraged me to embark on the most crazy and exciting adventure i could imagine… thank you babe - i sooo love you!!!